Ed McDonald > Quotes

“I saw you stand,” I said. “Saw your courage, back at Twelve. Saw the steel in your will, the power you command. You say there’s nothing of woman about you? You aren’t some painted vase, delicate and useless. You’re a fucking lioness. The strongest damn thing that ever lived. There’s nothing of you but woman.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“Corruption doesn’t take root in isolation, it embeds itself where the soil is fertile.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“The world is a cruel mother, a matron of darkness, selfishness, greed, and misery. For most, their time suckling at her breast is naught but a scramble through stinging, tearing briars before a naked, shameful collapse as the flesh gives out. And yet in the bright eyes of every newborn, there lies a spark, a potential for goodness, the possibility of a life worth living. That spark deserves its chance. And though most of them will turn out to be as worthless as the parents who sired them, while the cruelty of the earth will tell them to release their innocence and join in the drawing of daggers, every now and then one manages to clutch to its beauty and refuses to release it into the dark.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“Burning was a bad way to go, but my reserves of empathy were usually exhausted on orphans and puppies, a lot higher up the list than arsonists and
arseholes.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“When you realise the mountain you've been climbing is just a heap of shit, the fall doesn't feel so far.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“Just because the wolf pack fears your sling doesn’t mean you stop carrying stones.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“We were treading dry old ground, stepping between old footprints.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“Survive the world long enough and inevitably you will be replaced, cast down and despised.”
― Ed McDonald, Crowfall

“Somebody had to talk some sense into somebody, and the first somebody would be me, and the second had to be everybody.”
― Ed McDonald, Ravencry

“Fight the battles you can win, run from those you can’t. Good words to keep you alive.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“Nothing makes you feel more powerless than failing a child.”
― Ed McDonald, Ravencry

“Just because he wasn’t Nameless didn’t make it smart to underestimate him; a knife may not be a longsword, but the edge will cut you all the same.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“Men. Women,” he said, “we’re all the same where it matters. Can’t live your life alone, Ryhalt. Shouldn’t, anyway, not when there’s good people that want to hold us. Here we are sitting getting shit-faced in a city that’s being pelted with heaven-fire and we might die at any moment, and you’re going to turn down a good thing because you’re still hurting over a woman that’s been dead four years.”
― Ed McDonald, Ravencry

“You do whatever you want, but you never do it for yourself. You hate yourself too much for that.”
― Ed McDonald, Crowfall

“If I have to break the sky and shatter the earth,” I said before the statues of Justice and Mercy, “if I have to tear the mountains from their roots and drown the fucking oceans. If it takes me a hundred years. I will find you. I will bring you back.”
― Ed McDonald, Ravencry

“It is the way of the world that good people try to do the right thing for the wrong people's wrong reasons.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“To be a soldier takes some guts, some discipline, and some hardness. To be a deserter only takes the last.”
― Ed McDonald, Ravencry

“When you realise the mountain you’ve been climbing is just a heap of shit, the fall doesn’t feel so far.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“Life’s not a race towards the deathbed, hoping that you’ll get to snooze off peacefully without knowing it. Me, I was glad to look it full in the face. Better to go out doing something that matters.”
― Ed McDonald, Crowfall

“doesn’t inspire a great deal of interest. The Grandspire was our”
― Ed McDonald, Ravencry

“Time will numb you to anything. There is nothing that a determined human being cannot come to cope with in time.”
― Ed McDonald, Crowfall

“Pídeme. Pídeme lo que quieras. Te amo. No, me has obligado a amarte. Te odio. Pide y te lo negaré. No te daría ni una pizca de saliva. Te daría el mundo.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“Nobody ever wants to go into the Misery, but sometimes you just got to follow the trickle of fate’s piss.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“I don't like things that don't make sense. Not until I've put a knife in them.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“Do you hear me? Spirits or gods or whatever rules this world?
Do you hear me? I’m taking her back.”
― Ed McDonald, Crowfall

“Some men are born to charm ladies and spread their irresponsible seed across the land. Some exist to create the great works of art that inspire dreams and drive creativity for generations. Others are born to till the fields, put bread on the table, and raise their sons to till the fields, put bread on the table, raise sons of their own. I was born to end lives.”
― Ed McDonald, Blackwing

“I don't want to go away. I want to stay here. It's my home. Everything I got is here.' 'Just because you've picked up a turd, doesn't mean you have to treasure it', I said.”
― Ed McDonald, Ravencry